Tuning Slide # 5.22- Building Blocks of Creativity

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
— Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A few months ago I bookmarked a link I thought might be interesting to dig into:

Creativity and the Brain: What We Can Learn From Jazz Musicians (Link)

It was an NPR interview and story about Charles Limb, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John’s Hopkins University. It seems that Limb was studying jazz musicians and their creativity to discover the workings of the brain when we are being creative. The article said:

Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. “Very early on there’s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn't know before, that’s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that’s creative,” Limb said. “That’s always been essential for human survival.”

Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever”…

Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. (Link)

While it didn’t give me any direction about how I could get more creative in my life, it did affirm two things. The first was that music, and jazz, in particular, can be a source of developing creativity. The second was that the actions of creativity, making new things happen, may actually be part of our human evolutionary survival mechanisms. Creativity is essential, if for no other reason than to keep us from being bored. Creativity makes things new, not just making new things.

Creativity, then, is one of those ideas that can apply in many different areas. I wondered what the experts of the world might say about developing creativity so I Googled the question, “How do I learn creativity?” Among the landslide of links were a number that gave specific lists.

• 9 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Creativity | Inc.com
• 17 Ways to Develop Your Creativity - Verywell Mind
• 6 tips for building creativity and innovation | Management ...
• 3 Ways To Train Yourself To Be More Creative - Fast Company
• 5 Habits for Building Creativity Into Your Team - Brightpod

Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment.
It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
— Bruce Garrabrandt

So how then do we develop it? Looking over the web sites mentioned above, I came up with some ideas that struck me as basic. Here are some of them, with my thoughts on their importance in italics:

▪ Be Willing to Take Risks
Often the fears (see below) get in the way, or the opportunities to do something different don’t occur. When I went to my first Shell Lake Big Band Camp it was a big risk. I knew little about improvising, but I went to a safe place to try it out. It was so-so, but it was a start.

▪ Build Your Confidence
Just going to Shell Lake and playing music outside of my comfort zone did work. I found out that I might just be able to do something more with it. It was a few years before it fell into place away from the safe confines of the camp, but it has been a steady growth in confidence.

▪ Keep a Journal
Part of the way I know these things is that I have kept a journal. That is a place for me to be honest and open with no one but me! I can express what I am feeling, including my fears. I can wander in my thoughts and take note of new ideas and possibilities.

▪ Overcome Negative Attitudes that Block Creativity
By taking risks, I end up confronting that wonderfully negative inner critic that every artistic person talks about. I can document the many times that those negative attitudes have gotten in the way and then prove them wrong. This leads to new ideas and new challenges because sometimes I fail at being as creative as I want to be.

▪ Fight Your Fear of Failure
But failure is okay. If you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried- and you probably haven’t learned anything new.

▪ Ask for Advice
Be a learner, a student at all times. Other people can make a difference with a different point of view.

▪ Learn a New Skill
Sometimes it helps to find different areas to build creativity. I love photography- it is a great creativity booster since it sharpens my vision. I love putting videos together- it makes me think in a melding of sound, pictures, and motion.

Surprisingly there was very little overlap in the lists I looked at. Creativity is quite varied. But there were two items that were in more than one list. First was some variation of:

▪ Exercise.
It may be doing workouts or, as one put it, taking a walk. Exercise is a source of energy that can help boost creativity. It works with the mind to take you into new things.

The other common suggestion is even easier than that:

▪ Do nothing!
Introspection time. Be mindful. (I knew that would show up somehow to another in all this.) Take the time to let the mind wander into nothingness. Be aware, non-judgmentally of what is happening around you. In your quiet nothingness, a great deal can happen. As long as you are listening to the inner voice, the creative muse.

The word [music] derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses”)…. In classical Greece, [the term "music" refers to] any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music and lyric poetry." (Wikipedia)

Listen to your muse. Play your music. Be creative. You will come up with something that no one has ever done before. Then go ahead, and do it some more.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

Tuning Slide 5.16- Beyond the Notes

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

In the end it’s not about the instrument. It is pulling out everything in your soul.
Benjamin Zander

Benjamin Zander is the founder of the Boston Philharmonic and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He is an author and an engaging speaker. I first came across one of his music interpretation class videos with a young man playing the trumpet solo from Mahler’s Symphony #5. (Link) He is working with a young trumpet player he introduces as the greatest player his age anywhere in the world. As you listen and watch, Zander does some of the most incredible bits of teaching I have ever seen. Beyond the simple pleasure of hearing this music played so well, it is a deeper pleasure to watch and learn from Zander. “I want to hear more than trumpet playing,” he says at one point. “I want to hear the meaning of this piece encapsulated in this opening.”

Wow. Really?

Yes. It is about what is within us that we bring to the music to give it an aliveness. Even if we could play a Mahler piece like this just as Mahler wrote it, we would not be adding the elements that make each of our performances of a piece unique. How many different recordings are there of, say, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony? (A quick search on Amazon showed 193 hits under CD and vinyl; 367 under digital music.) Why is Bernstein different from Karajan or Barenboim or your college director? The soul and spirit of the conductor.

The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
Benjamin Zander

And none of these will ever get close to what Beethoven heard in his mind when he wrote it.

My task then, as a musician, is to learn to put my soul into the piece I am playing. It is to find that space in my spirit and life that connects with that piece of music, pull it together, and then let it play through the horn. I wish it were that easy. He does that with Elmer Churampi in the video mentioned above. See how Churampi shits the music ever so slightly through the video as he is urged on my Zander to make this amazing solo his own.

Zander then takes this idea from different starting places in other videos. “The audience doesn’t hear notes, it hears phrases,” he says at one point. He illustrates this in a TED talk and shows what happens when the musician moves beyond notes to the music itself. All the notes of western music are, in essence made up of the same 12 tones. I heard a musician joke once that he had been given a request for a particular piece. He said he didn’t know that one, but it is made of the same notes he was about to play. The differences are in how you use the notes, how they fit together in a flow (or phrase) and what the musician brings to it.

Zander is telling us that to get from the beginning to the end of a piece, we have to stop thinking about every single note along the way! That may be how we first learned to play our instrument- and it may be a bad way to learn- but it is the way we usually do it. We end up understanding a lot of individual notes, but do we know the music? Do we know the soul of the piece? Finding that can be a journey of an entire lifetime. In one video Zander, talking to a young musician, talks about the sensuality that the particular composer used to inform the composition. He looked at the young man and told him, “You are a wonderful musician - but you don’t have the depth yet.”

He connects this with what he calls “vision.” And this type of vision is the long-term view of nothing less than life itself. That will come, if you practice and see it more than just notes. Here are two possible exercises to build this:

✓ Start with something familiar and easy; something you know well or can learn in an instant. Take “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.Spend some time getting the feel of the song under your fingers and into your head. The normal flow, the way you have always sung it or heard it.

⁃ Then move to changing the rhythm a little. Swing the notes.
⁃ Add then change accents.
⁃ Think about what the words of the song are saying? What are the feelings they bring to mind?
⁃ For example, do they remind you of a wonderful childhood memory? Play it with joy. Do they remind you of the loss of a parent who used to sing it to you? Play it with sadness? Do you remember singing it to your younger sibling or a child you were babysitting or your own child? Play it with comfort.
⁃ Do this regularly until the song itself is expressing you.

✓ Go to something more complex and do some of these same things, but also let your understanding of the music change it. Play it in the relative minor key to the usual key. Perhaps even play it in all 12 major keys and see how it sounds different in different keys. What is your favorite key to play it in? Is it the one that is easiest to finger, or is it the one that captures the tonal quality you like in the music?

Yes, it takes time. But take the time. The self-factor will shine and illuminate the music. Just don't let it outshine the music. No matter how you view it, it is not about you- it is always the music!

The major difference between the 'best' and the 'average' is that the 'best' get as much pleasure from practice as performance.
Benjamin Zander

*******************

Videos mentioned above.

Mahler’s 5th Symphony Class:


TED Talk:


Haydn Cello Concert Class:



Interpretations of Music-Lessons for Life:
Link

4.21: Tuning Slide- Creativity: Beyond Mastery

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
— Yo-Yo Ma

We come to the tenth and last of Barry Green’s ten pathways to music mastery from his book, Mastery of Music.

10. Creativity: The Journey Into the Soul

Green starts right out by naming the problem:

Creativity is elusive. It is hard enough to describe, and difficult if not impossible to command. And yet when people tap into it, their thoughts take on a universality that can touch all of our lives.

He goes on to say that creativity fueled by curiosity that leads to answers from within:

[T]his business of looking inside is the key to an exploration of one’s own creativity. When we learn where to listen for the answers, we may hear the answers more often.

The end, he says, is to find a path to travel “deep into the soul.”

It would be nice to think that creativity is simply “do what moves you.” While that is part of it, it is only a very small part. Creativity, as Yo-Yo Ma says, is built on passion that allows one to be willing to take risks. But I for one don’t believe a pathway into the soul is aimless, narcissistic, or chaotic. There is, as we talked about a few weeks ago, a flow to it. There is getting “into a flow” and not just some wandering with no aim or hope of resolution. (Though sometimes in the midst of creative moments it may feel like that.)

Reading through Green’s chapter on creativity I found the following four ideas as essential on which our creativity is to be built in music.

✓ Sound
The perennial starting point of music. Sound is always the most important. But in creativity it is different than pulling out the tuner to be sure the sound is “in tune” whatever that might mean. Sound is the overall picture, the image the music is presenting, the emotions and feelings.

✓ Structure
Then there is the structure. What are your ideas that your creativity is forming? Structure is the dwelling place of the sound. It sets the boundaries, the highs and lows, the extremes and the solid base on which everything is to be built. Structure is not limiting, but gives the creativity the room to grow and move. Only then can creativity reach new ideas and new directions.

✓ Harmony
After structure we get into the next basic of music- harmony. Structure may tell us the key we want to play in, but harmony tells us how the chords and keys and notes relate to each other.

✓ Rhythm
This is where “flow” begins to be felt. How does the creative flow? What is its tempo, its variations in sound, its cycles of chords in a particular order? What does the movement of the idea feel like? I have been playing around with some composing and I found myself starting with a rhythm, a particular movement of different length notes. I didn’t know what structure it would have (eventually it became a variation on 12-bars). I didn’t know when notes would ascend, descend, or strike into dissonance. In this case it was the rhythm I wanted.

Last- but always:

Don’t forget the Soul!

That’s where we move beyond just creating, or just being creative and getting content. It is time to make some decisions. It is time for the depths of our persons and ideas and experience to begin to apply to what we are creating. Recently, the blog/newsletter Brainpickings referred to writer/doctor Oliver Sacks who talked about the early stages of being creative but who then understood that

Often, creators — be they artists or scientists — content themselves with reaching a level of mastery, then remaining at that plateau for the rest of their careers, comfortably creating more of what they already know well how to create. (Brainpickings)

Then they quote Sacks and his reflections:

Why is it that of every hundred gifted young musicians who study at Juilliard or every hundred brilliant young scientists who go to work in major labs under illustrious mentors, only a handful will write memorable musical compositions or make scientific discoveries of major importance? Are the majority, despite their gifts, lacking in some further creative spark? Are they missing characteristics other than creativity that may be essential for creative achievement — such as boldness, confidence, independence of mind?

It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to be productive at all. (Brainpickings)

Sacks is telling us that in the end the growth and movement of creativity goes beyond simple mastery of the instrument, the form, the rhythm, whatever. It can, if we are willing to go there, tap the energy of your own life. He is telling us to keep at it. Let it grow, incubate, rumble, until, when ready, be born.

Barry Green ends the chapter, in essence moving beyond mastery:

When we open ourselves and our souls, by practice and inspiration, but also by listening and letting go, music comes to us not as something we command, but as a gift. It is a gift, too, that we should pass the gift of music along.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.
— Charlie Parker

More Distance of Miles

I have obviously been thinking a great deal about the legacy of Miles Davis this past few weeks. I read his autobiography and have been digging into the making of his seminal album, Kind of Blue. He died in 1991 after making more innovations in jazz music than anyone except maybe Louis Armstrong. Even Ellington did not go as far as Davis went in changing the music. His influence on jazz (and hence American music) in the 2nd half of the 20th Century is beyond description.

Underneath all the change and innovations and legacy lie several pieces that are of interest as well. The first is his up and down wrestling with addiction. He was a heroin addict, used cocaine and pain pills for many years, even long after kicking heroin. He had alcohol problems but they were pale in comparison to the broader addiction issues. He was not alone in the heroin habit, of course. It was epidemic in the jazz world he inhabited. He fought it; he was clean and then he would do the things that addicts often do, believe they could handle it. So he would keep on drinking or using cocaine, "socially" of course. It never worked as he would spiral backwards.

Perhaps it is amazing that he managed to accomplish as much as he did. Unlike many of the others so hooked, he did not die young. He lived out his potential, although I wonder what it might have been like if he had managed to completely kick the addictions? He never said that his drugs helped him be creative. He was not stupid; he was an addict in a time and place that did not understand the disease and its ability to control the brain. I began working toward my addiction counseling license the year Davis died and we knew next to nothing compared to what we know today.

The second part of Davis' compulsive side was his inability to maintain healthy relations with women. He was not monogamous and probably never even tried. He kept looking for something that he was unable to experience, love and stability. Some of that was his endless curiosity and creativity that encompassed everything. He was guided, even imprisoned by his sexual needs and searching. This, we know today, as having the same roots as addiction. The process of the human brain is biochemical, regulated- and dysregulated- by neurochemicals that carry everything from memories to pleasure, fear to ecstasy. Davis' relationships were almost as controlling of his life as his addictions. He admits that his use of drugs did get in the way of his sexual drive. Not a surprise.

This side did not have the kind of periodic impact on his creativity that addiction did. Addiction is powerful, overwhelming, and ultimately in complete control. That did prevent him at times from performing to the level he could have.

In that way, Davis' story is a cautionary tale. There are those who, in spite of incredible personal dysfunction, can change the world. (Steve Jobs' narcissistic, even anti-social personality comes to mind.) As I have been reading these different accounts of his music and accomplishments I have at times been in awe of what he was able to do. He was a genius who heard what he wanted in his head and moved with it. He was able to pick out people who would work within the framework he dreamed of. He turned many of them into music leaders in their own right.

I was also deeply saddened by many aspects of his story. Some of it- perhaps even most of it- was beyond his control. That's the old idea of powerlessness found in the recovery community. He was unable to ever see that. But that was also why he was as creative and innovative as he was. He refused to be told that something wasn't possible- that it was beyond his ability or control.

The paradox of a person like Miles Davis, then, is that tension that for many a lesser person will drive them into an early grave. He was who he was and for that the world has been given insights and music that the lesser person would never have been able to give.

Overwhelmed

• With Baseball: The All Star Game activities were wondrous and fun. More- much more to come. But it has taken its toll on my writing and sense of movement forward.

• With Pictures: All that baseball has given me more than enough pictures to sort through, tag, classify, and decide what to keep. It is taking its toll on my writing and sense of movement forward.

• With Change: I didn't realize it until my wife put it together for me at lunch today, I am just now beginning to really work on this whole retirement thing. I have been a little unfocused, preoccupied, and somewhat inattentive. That, too, is taking its toll on my writing and sense of movement forward.

• With Ideas: Perhaps because of the first three, my mind is having a field day of thoughts and possibilities. Then they kind of flit around, go whizzing by the edge of consciousness, then dive back under the surface before some of them have a chance to be caught. Such takes a toll on my writing and sense of movement forward.

Forgiveness is therefore requested if any of this has had any impact on you. Not that I'm all that important, but I thought I would just say it anyway.

You Find the Greatest Things

Came across a link this morning that is geared to help those of us who write and read in coffee shops.

It is a web site that plays a background sound of a coffee house murmur.

I am using it right now as I write this- and it's working. I feel like I've gone to my favorite Caribou Coffee.

It is called Coffitivity. (Link)

On their site they point out that it is hard to be creative in either quiet or noisy conditions. They provide:

the mix of calm and commotion in an environment like a coffee house [that] is proven to be just what you need to get those creative juices flowing.

Maybe in those too quiet place we get too easily distracted by our own thoughts and don't stay on track. I know my ADD does that to me all the (squirrel!) time. The theory that I have heard- and agree with- is that the background noise, or my music on my headphones, etc- becomes a magnet for the ADD attitude and allows the brain to stay focused on what it is doing.
Their tag

Coffitivity
Enough noise to work.

I don't know if that is really how it works, but I know it works.

The problem with Coffitivity, though, is that I have to brew my own coffee.

Oh- and so far I haven't heard the espresso machine, either.

A Thought from Behind the Keyboard

Some days you just want to crawl into a hole and pull it in after you. From depths of uncertainty comes the feeling that enough is enough.

Usually the thoughts pop up when things seem the least likely to make sense. You shake your head and wonder what the hell life is all about. No, not in a giving-up kind of way; just the confused way that keeps looking for answers and insights and direction.

Sometimes the answer is just not there. Sometimes the questions are simply the lack of control one feels over the environment, the politics, the world, other people and on... and on... and on.

I have discovered that when that happens I need to do something creative that is totally unrelated to anything I'm trying to figure out. At those moments I play my trumpet or dig out my journal and pen and get the physical pleasure of writing on paper. Or I sit here behind the keyboard having done some writing and editing on an upcoming post or article for Blogcritics.

Life drifts slowly back to the center. It doesn't seem quite the way it did before. Even though I haven't solved anything and all those things over which I have no power, influence or leverage are still there, they have lost their monstrous frame and look like just another day's journey through life.

For me that was this week's post-modern pilgrimage. In the middle was creativity, and music, and people I like being with. It keeps me mindful of what is important and not to sweat the small stuff- which is just about everything around me each day. In the great scheme of things, most things are small things.

Can't get much better than that.

Attention Deficit Creativity?

Jonah Lehrer at the Wired.com blog, The Frontal Cortex, gives insight into why distractability may be helpful and even supportive of creativity:

The association between creativity and open-mindedness has long been recognized, and what’s more open-minded than distractability? People with low latent inhibition are literally unable to close their mind, to keep the spotlight of attention from drifting off to the far corners of the stage. The end result is that they can’t help but consider the unexpected.
-Jonah Lehrer

It is interesting to realize that at times we make negatives out of what can be positives in some people's lives. That is not to minimize the consequences of ADD in many individuals- it can certainly get in the way. But many people, diagnosed or not, have found ways to be quite successful even with ADD. Perhaps that brief quote from Lehrer above is part of the reason why it can be done.

But of course there is also the ability to see the world in all its many facets. Sure, it may be frustrating those trying to make sense of us, but, hey, it's all...

Squirrel!